Iron for the Spirit
by Lomonaaeren
Summary: HPDM pre-slash. Investigating a thing that might be a reverse fairy mound is not exactly what Draco wants to spend his evening doing. But doing it with Harry Potter? Then it's not so bad. COMPLETE.


**Title:** Iron for the Spirit

 **Disclaimer:** J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.

 **Pairing:** Harry/Draco

 **Rating:** PG-13

 **Warnings:** Mild angst

 **Wordcount:** 6200

 **Summary:** Investigating a thing that might be a reverse fairy mound is not exactly what Draco wants to spend his evening doing. But doing it with Harry Potter? Then it's not so bad.

 **Author's Notes:** Another of my July Celebration fics, for the anonymous prompt:

 _uhm... what about some adventure with lots of traveling and ~creepy~ ruins, oh and lots of archaic, interesting magic? you're always so creative with that stuff. The adventure somehow brings Harry and Draco, together, and UST happens. Post DH, ewe, works best I think._

 **Iron for the Spirit**

"How do we know this was a fairy mound?"

"We don't. And that's part of the point."

Draco sighed and moved around to the far side of the small green hill, studying it with critical eyes. It was the appropriate shape, rounded without being so round that it would seem like a human burial mound. It had thorn trees crowded around it, arranged so that they formed a rough circle. And it had a few ancient, strange runes carved into glittering white stones on it, which had made knowing forces in the Muggle government nudge it over to the attention of the Ministry instead of trying to handle it themselves.

The problem was, the runes were all invoking iron in one way or another. And iron was poison to the kind of fey that usually made mounds like this.

"They could be a branch of the fairies that developed tolerance to iron, I suppose," Potter continued in a musing voice, jogging slowly around the other side of the hill. It was big enough that Draco could no longer see him when he looked up, but of course his voice traveled easily. "There's no reason they couldn't."

"Except that part of the definition of fey is their vulnerability to cold iron. How could they develop a tolerance for it and remain fey?"

"Part of the _wizarding_ definition of fey. It doesn't mean that they need to stick to what we say about them."

Draco rolled his eyes. Potter was an expert in magical creatures, which was one reason the Ministry had sent him here. Draco read runes and published academic papers for a living when he wasn't out investigating the actual ruins that produced the runes.

And, he had to admit, half the time the work he did was with Potter. There was always the chance that giants, smarter than the ones around now, had added their own unique touch to the ruins, or beings that Draco wasn't personally familiar with had scattered traps around. And there were few enough people who did what Potter did in the first place. Draco had had to get accustomed to his presence.

 _It could be worse. It could be Granger._

Even knowing that Hermione Granger was interested in practicing law that protected magical creatures couldn't stop a shudder from running down Draco's spine. He shook his head and circled the mound to Potter's side. It was the odd atmosphere of the place—soft and cold as the dew-starred spiderwebs slung between the trees—that was getting to him.

"The runes may ward against iron, instead of invoking it for protection," Draco said, for argument's sake.

Potter snorted at him and crouched to turn one of the stones in question over with his wand. It glittered at them, subtler and brighter than quartz. "Come on, Malfoy. I may not have the expertise that you do, but I _know_ a protection rune when I see one."

"But maybe they were still trying to defend against it—"

"And I know the difference between protection runes begging something to leave them alone and begging something to come in." Potter sat back on his heels and nodded seriously at the mound of the hill. "This is an invitation rune, an invitation to the spirit of the iron." He paused and turned his head.

Draco turned with him, backing up so that he had a comforting thorn tree, the tallest one in the outer circle, resting right against him. There was a wind picking up. And if Potter was standing up now and moving so that he faced the wind, instead of trying to ignore it, then Draco was grimly satisfied it hadn't been his fancy.

"What is it?" Draco whispered.

"Whatever they used the runes to invite."

Draco gave him a startled look before he could stop himself. Potter was grinning hugely. He had his wand out and was weaving patterns in the air that Draco knew were going to form runes. He just didn't know what kind they were yet.

But then he made out a curve that was unique a rune of greeting, usually used to make people feel comfortable in inns, and squawked in outrage.

"Potter! The last thing we want to do is make it feel _comfortable!_ "

"Then you would rather that it came up on us and decided that we were food or playthings instead of friends?" Potter asked calmly, tucking his wand away. "I think we're about to get a visit from it whether or not we want to. Or them."

Draco turned around again, and almost swallowed his tongue when he saw the shapes drifting among the thorn trees. They were fey, or at least they had the general shape of them, the long fingers with curved nails on the end halfway between human ones and claws. They had the wispy hair, the long and stretched faces, the pointed chins that reminded Draco of some of his ancestors.

But these particular fey had iron-grey hair and a charcoal-colored tinge to their nails. And Draco had never seen any fey with such shining, hard grey eyes. Most of them looked like twilight or rain. These were stones.

 _Or iron_ , said a mocking voice in the back of his head that tended to speak up at the worst times of his life.

Draco gritted his teeth and drew a rune of greeting himself, since he could see the fey drifting towards Potter in a different way than they did towards him. After that, both groups looked the same, although Draco didn't know what kind of welcome they might get from these particular creatures. To something fey, mercy might be a swift, clean death, to rid them of the burden of growing old.

When the fey had surrounded them in a sharp ring and stood there, glittering like the quartz, Draco glanced at Potter. To his astonishment, Potter had a soft smile on his face, and he moved forwards with his hands out.

The nearest of the fey, who might be a woman if they obeyed the same kind of gender rules that humans did, took them and turned them over, staring at them in silence. Then she turned and drew Potter in the direction of the next nearest fey, a man. Potter went, still grinning like an idiot.

A cold presence in front of Draco made him whip around. Before he could make the decision on whether or not to draw his wand—which, he could admit later, would have been a poor one—the fey man in front of him took his hands.

Draco shivered. It was like being touched by cold veils, which drifted around him and then solidified in random places. At one point he was feeling the edge of a nail on the thumb and the heel of the man's hand, and then he would feel the palm pressed against his and the rest of the nails, and then only the little finger and nothing else.

Whatever the creature had been looking for in Draco's face, it evidently found it. He turned and got tugged along to the next one in line, likely a woman. She stared at Draco's wrists instead of his face, but still found whatever she was she needed, and passed him down. The only comfort to Draco was that he could see, from the corner of his eye, Potter traveling a similar circuit.

It wasn't long before they ended up next to each other, and Potter gave him a slightly amused smile as Draco stood there with his arms folded, trying not to touch the fey more than he absolutely needed to. "See the benefits of making friends?" Potter whispered.

"You still have no idea what they want us for," Draco snapped back, although he took care not to raise his voice. "It could be anything. Why in the world are we here?"

"I thought we were looking into ruins that—"

One of the fey, who Draco thought might be the woman who had looked at his wrists, turned and picked up a glitter from the air that turned into a bright silver horn. She held it to her lips and blew so hard that Draco jumped in spite of himself. The sound was thin and faint and far, as if muffled behind several layers of walls.

The horn-call was answered almost at once, by the rumbling noise of hooves. Draco stared, open-mouthed, as several long-bodied horses materialized from the drifting mist on the other side of the stones. They looked to be too delicate, with necks that literally curved like a swan's and lean floating legs, to carry the riders on their backs, but they did anyway.

And those riders were fey in _iron_ armor.

Draco stared until he thought his eyes might rot out of his head in that position, but there could be no doubt of it. The armor clanked around the fey as they turned their horses in a circle about Potter and Draco, and it had none of the shine of steel. Draco couldn't even see himself in most of the rough breastplates and greaves wheeling past him.

The woman who held the horn blew another blast, and for a second Draco wished that he dared lift his hands and put his fingers in his ears. He didn't, though. Any slight movement might give the fey an excuse to attack.

The largest horse finally reared right in front of Draco. For a moment, hooves tore the air, and Draco found himself staring at them, and the undeniably iron shoes that covered them, rather than up at the fey.

There was a slit of darkness opening in the air between those hooves. It went on growing, tumbling, turning, until Draco had to swallow and look away or be sick.

But still the darkness went on growing, and then it overwhelmed him, swept him up, turned him into a tiny speck that moved back and forth in a blackness so intense staring at the iron armor for the rest of his life would have been preferable. The cold billowed around him, too, and Draco thought he actually felt snowflakes melting on his arms and head for a second.

When he dropped out of the darkness, or came to, he was standing in a small, barren square box of a room. It seemed to be underground, at least if the roots that streaked through the ceiling were any indication. There were rivulets of water snaking here and there, and more of the runes that Potter had said were invitations to the iron dotting the stones. Draco shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot, wondering if he could use his wand now to break out.

A sharp groan drew his attention, and he spun around with the wand already drawn. Potter sat up with his back against the stones and looked at the chamber with interest, whistling a little under his breath.

"I hoped I could talk to them and persuade them to let us go," he said thoughtfully. "I suppose that won't happen now, huh?"

Draco said nothing, but simply turned his head away. He had had enough of listening to Potter's advice for now.

* * *

Hours passed, and nothing changed, except that now and then plates materialized in the corner of the cave where they had first appeared. Draco had examined the plates closely, in case they could turn them into weapons, but he had to give that up as a bad job. They weren't even plates in the strict sense of the word, but simply round pieces of bark, whole as if torn from the living tree.

He'd tried to show them to Potter as evidence that these fey didn't really use iron after all, but Potter had silently pointed out the iron forks and knives that came along with them.

They didn't eat the food, of course. Even Draco, although he hadn't studied magical creatures as intensively as Potter, had heard about "gifts" of cakes and meat and the like that would trap the eater in Fairyland. Mostly they stayed silent, now and then talking about subjects that didn't have a chance of exploding into antagonism.

Potter liked to reminisce about meals he'd eaten in the past, to Draco's intense disgust.

"Mrs. Weasley makes this _roast_ ," he was currently saying. After as long as they'd been in the cave-room—however long that _was_ —Potter could invest even ordinary words with longing. "It steams when she carries it in, and there's always a juice around it. It's the juice of the meat itself, mixed with this broth she always makes. It smells so good. It smells like you would give a piece of your heart for a piece of it…"

" _Enough_ , Potter."

Potter jumped and looked at Draco with startled eyes, then grimaced a little. "Right," he said. "If these are fey, then we're likely to end up literally doing that, right?" He cleared his throat, which sounded hoarse from lack of water to Draco, and glanced away. "Reckon you don't want to be reminded of the possibility."

Draco closed his eyes. It seemed simplest to say nothing. They hadn't argued as much when that was true.

But he found himself whispering the words anyway. "I've been hungry like this before a few times in my life."

"Have you?"

Draco ignored the startled sympathy in Potter's voice, and simply nodded. "I never ate enough during the year when the Dark Lord lived in Malfoy Manor. He liked to keep me short on food as a punishment to my parents, but he told me I could go and get food from the kitchens at night if I was brave enough. I never was."

"Because you lay awake in your bed wondering if he would catch you," Potter breathed. "Because you thought about the food and how wonderful it would taste, but you also wondered if the punishment you would get was worth it."

Draco snapped his eyes open and stared at Potter. "How did you _know_ that?"

Potter cleared his throat. "How do you think I'm bearing this starvation so well, Malfoy?"

Draco hesitated, but in the end, it wasn't like there were a lot of times during Potter's life when he would have been starved. "Your Muggle relatives?"

"Yeah."

"I'm sorry," Draco said, and wondered how much he meant the words. Potter had been irritating him a second ago, and now it was slightly terrifying that a person he despised knew one of the secrets he'd kept for years. But he also didn't think Potter would go and tell everyone, if only because he would have to explain how he knew.

And now Draco had one of his secrets to use in return, if it came to that.

"Yeah, well, it was a long time ago."

"But that doesn't make it hurt less," said Draco, and he knew, hard, like nails pounded into his bones, exactly how true that was.

Potter didn't reply, but Draco thought he shifted a little closer, shuffling in the faint light of the _Lumos_ Charm that was their only source of illumination. They sat in silence again after that. But it was friendlier this time.

* * *

Draco woke reluctantly, with Potter shaking his shoulder, and only sat up when he heard the slosh of liquid in a mug.

"They've sent water, Malfoy."

Draco blinked, then hesitated when he saw the mug in Potter's hand. "But it could be poisoned or cursed just like the food we've refused so far."

Potter tapped the side of the mug. His fingers rang on metal. "No. Steel. Maybe we could've eaten the food, too. The iron cutlery would probably get rid of any enchantment. But I _know_ that no fairy water could survive the enchantment of being encased in steel."

Draco decided he had to believe that, too, because he was so thirsty. He sat up and reached out, only to note that his hands were shaking so badly he would probably drop the mug if he tried to hold it. He grimaced.

"Here, Malfoy." Potter gently worked an arm behind Draco's head and held it in place while he extended the mug. Draco sipped and sipped, making himself take dainty swallows. Potter would need some, too.

"Why aren't _your_ hands shaking?" Draco asked, when his voice and hands were back under control. Potter did sit down instead of standing the way he had while Draco drank, but he did it on his own without difficulty.

Potter gave him an oblique look. "Used to going longer than this without it. Sometimes your body adapts."

Draco blinked and fell silent. Somehow, he had thought when Potter mentioned being starved that it was something that had happened to him for a short period of time, or at worst a few months out of the year, the way Draco's starvation had. But no.

He didn't apologize again, though, because it seemed like it wouldn't have any point. Potter swallowed some more and put the mug aside. It still had some liquid in it sloshing near the bottom. Potter shrugged when Draco stared at him. "Who knows why they gave us this? They might not give us any more. It's best to save it."

 _Maybe, but it takes more self-control than I would have._ Draco had barely had enough self-control to let Potter take the mug. He straightened his back. "Do you think we could try eating some of the food?"

"There's none here right now. They've taken it all back, the same way it arrived."

Draco sighed and leaned against the wall, closing his eyes as he felt the hardness of the rock. When he'd been asleep, he hadn't noticed, and he halfway wished he could go back there. "The next time it comes, let's trying eating it with the iron forks and knives. It might work—"

He'd hardly finished the words when he heard a sharp clatter. Draco spun around, wand in hand, and ended up on his bum. He cursed before he could stop himself, despite the fear of appearing unprofessional in front of Potter. He'd been a lot more weakened by the lack of food and water than he thought, if he couldn't even keep his feet.

"Here they are." Potter's voice was odd as he held up the bark plate and the iron cutlery. Draco craned his head in the light of the wand and saw the edges of a thick sandwich and a heavy wheel of cheese that made his mouth water, along with grapes.

"What is it?" he added, when he saw that Potter was still hanging back instead of carrying the food towards him. Draco didn't think he would be _that_ selfish, and his stomach rumbled, so Potter should know how hungry he was.

"It's just not like fey to respond so promptly to a complaint," Potter muttered, frowning. "It's not like we're invited guests. We're prisoners. And most of the time, they dance prisoners to death or require them to provide some service. Why give us food the minute we ask for it?"

Draco closed his eyes hard and tried to perform the mental adjustment, from being pleased by the arrival of sustenance to considering their captors. He managed, but it was so hard that he winced.

"Perhaps we're not prisoners so much as meant to learn something," he muttered. "Or experiments? Subjects for a test?" He opened his eyes and shook his head, in the end. There were too many possibilities, and that was worse than a mere _im_ possibility, like the runes that seemed to invoke iron for protection and aid. "I don't understand, Potter. I don't know."

"Fine," said Potter, and he crawled forwards and held out a grape to Draco. Draco swallowed greedily, feeling the juice and the roundness itself as gifts in his mouth. He reached at once for the nearest sandwich and lifted it off the plate.

The sandwich promptly went misty and transparent, and Draco could no longer feel its weight in his hands at all. He could still _see_ it, but it was like holding the ghost of food.

He stared, and then turned and looked at Potter. "Well, it seems as if we've found why they're willing to share this food. They never meant us to eat it. So they fit the cruelty of the fey after all." He leaned over to put the sandwich back on the plate.

"I don't understand it." Potter leaned in to touch the sandwich. "They were both behaving normally when I picked the plate up—"

He stopped. Draco knew why. The instant Potter's fingers had brushed the top of that ghostly image, the sandwich became real again, thick brown bread and dripping meat and tomato, sitting there peacefully.

"Let me try something," Potter said, and scrambled around on his knees and put the plate on the floor without letting go of the sandwich. "Make sure that you can lift it to your mouth, but we'll do it together."

Draco did it warily, wondering as he did so if he wanted to consume food that would half-disappear, or if he would end up biting his own fingers. But his teeth met in the sandwich, and he sighed in bliss, swallowing so fast that he choked.

Another mug of water must have appeared; Potter helped him lower the sandwich and drink some more of the fairly flat and neutral water from steel. Then he sat back and looked at the sandwich thoughtfully.

"They want us to eat together?" he asked, and tried to pick up the next sandwich, which also went insubstantial. "They want us to eat together." He leaned against the back of the cave wall and looked at Draco. "Think you can handle that?"

Draco rolled his eyes. His stomach still ached, but he was considerably less desperate than he had been when he realized how much the starvation had weakened him. "I've been doing it fine so far, haven't I?" He paused and looked at Potter sideways, examining the lines of his face thoughtfully. "Have _you_ had anything to eat yet?"

Potter shook his head silently, and Draco rolled to his knees and urged him back against the wall of the cavern. Potter might be better off than Draco in some ways, physically, but not now. His face was grey, and he made the bark plate tremble when he tried to pick it up again.

"Now, let me feed you," Draco commanded, and held his breath when Potter's eyes came up in challenge.

After a second, though, Potter looked away and nodded. Draco smiled and picked up a grape. He thought he could feed them to Potter by himself, because Potter had done it with that grape he held out to Draco's lips just a minute ago.

Sure enough, the grape stayed solid, maybe because Draco intended to give it to someone else. Potter formed his lips around it, and a swift tingle slid through Draco's belly. He ignored it. The strangest things aroused him sometimes. He was an expert at ignoring it.

"Now," he said, and sat back on his heels to study the platter. "We can eat fast, alternating bites, or we can take turns and eat more slowly. What do you want to do?"

"You're _asking_?"

"I," Draco said, and made sure to have a dignified look on his face as he turned back to meet Potter's eyes, "am not fey."

Potter smiled at that, and nodded. "Let's alternate bites, then."

It was the exact plan Draco would have preferred himself, so he had nothing to say against it. He opened his mouth, and Potter put his hand on the sandwich so it manifested the way Draco would have wanted, in his mouth, all thick and crunchy and full of wonder.

Potter ate a bite then, and Draco another. The plan had the added goodness of forcing them to slow down so they didn't choke or get sick. Draco thoughtfully moved a slightly-chewed ball of bread and tomato to his left cheek and nodded.

The fey had planned well, always assuming that this was part of some dastardly plan to force him and Potter to work together and depend on each other.

But what would be the _goal_ of such a plan? Draco had a notion of what Ministry officials would gain from this, or friends of theirs who wanted them to get along. But the fey had never had sufficiently human motives throughout most of history for wizards to understand them. Why this?

Potter finally settled back, and gave the last bite to Draco. Then they fed each other from the grapes and the wheel of cheese until those were gone. Draco licked the delightfully salty taste of cheese from his lips, and froze suddenly.

"What?" Potter asked around a yawn. He seemed to be all for going to sleep right there, and in fact he was conjuring blankets and pillows. Draco fleetingly wondered why he hadn't done that earlier, but he supposed Potter hadn't had the strength to power his magic then.

"We didn't use the forks and knives to eat it," Draco whispered. "We just picked up and ate with our fingers. Do you think that means the fey mean to trap us?" He stared around the cave, almost expecting the strange, iron-colored creatures to appear any moment.

Potter shook his head and burrowed deeper into the blankets. "No. The food was the kind it would be hard to eat with the cutlery, anyway. I think they're different. Not fey in the same way we're used to. They use iron. Different." He lifted a tousled head and blinked at Draco. "Come on."

"What?" Draco picked up his wand and looked dubiously around the cavern. He wondered if Potter meant for him to conjure his own blankets and pillows, or clean up some of the dirt and small stones that would no doubt keep them from resting comfortably.

Potter rolled his eyes and yawned again. "Well? If they want us to work together to eat, they'll probably make separate beds disappear anyway. Come on and crawl in. It'll be warm," he added coaxingly, as if he thought Draco was sitting still there simply out of fear of the cold.

"Potter?" Draco closed his eyes and listened to the rooting and rustling under the blankets that Potter was doing, small, homey sounds that made a part of Draco's chest feel cold indeed, and lonely. "I can't sleep with you."

"Was asking you to _sleep_ with me, not _sleep_ with me," said Potter incoherently.

But Draco knew very well what he meant, and he swallowed, his fingers tingling, as he crept closer to the blankets. He hesitated when he saw how thoroughly Potter had tangled himself in them already. "Are you sure?"

"Go to sleep and stop your whining, Malfoy."

It would be nice to rest under already-conjured blankets instead of using the magic to create some himself, Draco conceded. He hesitantly undid his cloak and laid it beside him. It would probably be too hot under there to wear all his clothes.

And it _was_. Potter blasted heat like one of the chests Draco had investigated last year, covered with fire-runes by an elemental specialist intent on protecting his treasures. Potter also tended to wriggle and stretch and turn over, and Draco found himself surrounded and cuddled like a special teddy bear inside a minute.

Strangely, Draco didn't want to pull back. He only wanted to get closer, and closer. Closer than would be wise even with Potter awake.

 _I do have strange thoughts,_ Draco decided as he closed his eyes. _Probably fey-inspired. Or Potter-inspired._

* * *

"Malfoy?"

 _Five more minutes,_ Draco thought, long after he should have remembered that his magical alarms didn't speak his name in that well-remembered voice or poke him in the ribs. And then he finally sat up and popped his eyes open.

Potter was still tangled in blankets down to the waist, but he was sitting up and holding another bark platter. This one had bacon, scrambled eggs, toast dripping with something so melted Draco couldn't identify it but which was probably butter, and a huge fluffy scone with definite butter on it that they were probably meant to share. The steel mug this time held juice that smelled like it came from mangoes.

"Breakfast?"

Draco nodded and reached for the scone, just as a test. Of course, it promptly thinned and faded as his fingers touched it. He shook his head and looked up at Potter. "You're the expert on the behavior of magical creatures. Any idea why they would be so invested in doing this to us?"

"No ideas that make sense." Potter looked around as though he thought the fey would be spying on them, and in fact he lowered his voice. "Unless we have been defining them wrongly as fey, this time. They _must_ be different if they can endure iron. Of course, maybe it's our ideas about fey and iron that are wrong, rather than them not being similar to other peoples I'm more familiar with. Or maybe fey can sometimes endure iron and sometimes can't."

"And you don't know which of those ideas is true?" Draco couldn't keep the wariness out of his voice.

Potter beamed at him. "No idea."

Draco sighed and controlled the impulse to shatter something. At least he had the magical strength to do that now, and he never would have if he and Potter hadn't figured out that they had to eat the food together.

He paused. Then he reached out and took hold of Potter's hand, turning it back and forth. They were both right-handed, which made things awkward, but Draco could think of a few spells that should help them overcome that.

"Draco?"

"Shhh," Draco said patiently, and shifted position, hesitating just a moment before he gripped the end of Potter's wand. Potter had used Draco's hawthorn wand during the war, so Draco knew that one would serve Potter, but there was no guarantee the compatibility ran in the other direction.

Potter didn't try to stop him, at least, although his eyes were narrow with speculation. Draco gasped as a surge of warm strength went up his arm, and he had to shake his head to clear it. There seemed to be sparks leaping out his ears, and he leaned further back without letting go his grip on Potter's wand.

"Draco?" Potter asked, and Draco realized consciously that he'd used Draco's first name instead of his last one.

"I'm all right," Draco said, and took a deep breath before he finally let his hold on the holly wand go. He was reluctant to explain his plan aloud, worried that some of the iron fey could be listening, but he knew, in one part of him, that that was ridiculous. He would have to explain it or risk Potter doing something wrong. "Do you think we can cast a spell at the same time to get out of here?"

Potter's eyes widened. Before Draco could even repeat the question, he turned abruptly, linked his right arm around Draco's, and placed their wands side-by-side, so that Draco's knuckles were brushing holly and Potter's knuckles were brushing hawthorn.

It made another pulse of power rise in Draco, like nothing he'd ever known except when he was working with some of the more volatile runes he knew on ground that was already charged with magic. They didn't consult together on what spell would be most effective for getting out of this trap; they opened their mouths and chanted together, " _Confringo saxa!_ "

The spell leaped out of their wands like a Patronus, glowing with the same brightness, and dashed against the stones. Draco found himself rolling to shield Potter from the blast, again with no discussion, and found that Potter was already there, dragging Draco flat and dropping so that he was covering him from any tiny flying bits.

The explosion was tremendous, and the ringing seemed to last in Draco's ears even past the shaking of the ground. When he opened his eyes and lifted his head at last, he saw curved pieces of iron lying all around, and stared.

"I think the rock was banded with iron on the outside," Potter said, noting the direction of his eyes, and he stood up and scrambled out of the hole, with Draco right beside him.

They were standing on the outside of the fairy mound they'd first been called to study, with two halves of hawthorn trees down and dead on the ground in front of them. Draco swallowed. He'd been concerned that the fey might take them under the hill, into their land of magic, and they might never return, but he hadn't known it would be so literal.

His gaze fell on a rune inscribed on the earth outside the circle of hawthorn trees, and he climbed over the broken branches to get to it, despite Potter's hissed warning. There were two runes, actually, he saw as he came near, joined inside a circle. The first one was the rune invoking iron for protection that he was already familiar with from elsewhere on the fairy mound.

The second…

Draco traced it with one finger, trembling, and looked around a little. But no fey or their strange horses appeared. There was only the rune, and he turned his head and stared at Potter blankly as he came up beside him.

"Draco? What's wrong?"

 _Of course, Potter can't read the runes._ Draco swallowed and said, "That second rune is Ingwaz."

Blank incomprehension for a moment, and then Potter shook his head and mouthed, "So?"

"It means—or it can mean—the joining of something together." Draco moved slowly away from Potter, even though he knew that they could still cast spells together, could still act of one mind, if he were to reach out to Potter's wand. "I think the fey were forcing us together. I don't know why, but they were."

Potter turned and eyed him, and Draco stopped moving. Maybe it was only magically-induced, but the sensation of Potter's gaze still calmed him.

"I don't think so," Potter said. "Their motivations are often incomprehensible, but we can learn a little about fey from watching their interactions with animals. Do you know they never cage animals together? They don't tame them. They don't breed them. They only conjure them and let them fade back into magic when they're done with them, or let them run wild and call them when they need their services."

"So?" Draco snapped.

" _So_ , it means that I don't think they were trying to make us be—together, if that's what you're afraid of." Potter took a step closer and reached out, and Draco found himself trembling like a wild thing as Potter's hand glanced down his cheek. "I think the rune and the iron combined means they were strengthening the hold of their magic on the rock prison. No wonder we only won through it by combining our magic."

Draco closed his eyes. He thought the explanation made good sense, but on the other hand, Potter didn't know anything about runes that didn't directly concern creatures, or he would have known about Ingwaz. What—what if the sensation of closeness he felt to Potter was nothing but spell-bound? Spell-caused?

"Draco."

Draco opened his eyes and looked at Potter again.

On the other hand, as he'd said, the fey were incomprehensible. So Draco could worry forever about what they'd actually meant to do without arriving at a definite answer. And the combination of runes _could_ mean that they'd tried to strengthen rock and iron together to hold two wizards, for whatever reason they would want to do that.

 _You can worry forever. Or you can accept._

"Harry," Draco said, because he wanted to, and because he enjoyed the feeling like sunlight coming down that spread through him when he saw Potter's smile. "Let's—go home, and talk about this."

"Of course." Potter fell into stride immediately beside him, nudging his shoulder against Draco's a little. "My place or yours?"

And Draco had to laugh, and when he laughed, he felt free.

He did make sure to tread on the edge of the inscribed runes as they went over them, but he felt no change in his emotions even when he deliberately smudged the Ingwaz rune with one foot.

 _Probably real, then. Maybe that's all we can be sure of. That most things are probably real._

He sneaked a look sideways at Potter's gentle, contented smile.

 _And maybe we can work harder to make the things we want real, too._

 **The End.**


End file.
